Well, again, let me welcome you, especially those of you who are visiting.
We started a couple of weeks ago a series basically asking, exploring some of the ultimate questions of life,
questions that everybody wonders about regardless of what they believe,
questions to which our beliefs speak,
questions like where did all of this come from?
Who are we?
Why are we here?
What are we here for?
How do we make sense of our lives?
How do we make sense of our work, our culture, our society?
How do we understand things like gender or sexuality or marriage?
How do we make sense of all of this?
And the Bible says if we want to understand these things,
that the first thing we have to do is to go back to the beginning.
We have to go back to the book of Genesis,
and specifically the opening chapters of Genesis.
The first 11 chapters of Genesis really lay the foundation for everything else,
and particularly the first three chapters.
And so this week we're continuing our study in this book,
looking at the opening chapters,
and we're focusing on Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 through verse 25,
and we're seeking to understand the world as a whole, creation as a whole.
This passage is very familiar to a lot of people,
primarily because of the debates that are inspired around it.
You hear about the creation story in Genesis 1,
and you immediately think of the debate,
or really the debate is a nice way to put it,
the battle that is perceived to exist between faith and science.
And you think of Ken Ham and the evolution debate,
and we think of this tension that exists.
As we said last week,
whenever we want to interpret the Bible,
not just this, but any place in the Bible,
we have to be able to understand the mindset of the people who wrote it,
and the people to whom it was written originally.
In other words, we have to be able to read ancient texts,
not through modern eyes, but through ancient eyes.
We have to read ancient texts through ancient eyes.
Genesis, along with all of the other ancient Near Eastern accounts of creation,
when it was written,
the prevailing questions and concerns in people's minds
had nothing to do with how things came to be.
This was not written as a scientific document.
It was not written to explain the processes of creation.
It was written to answer the far deeper and more fundamental question of why.
Why?
Not how was all of this made,
but for what was all of this made?
So it's not a science textbook.
It's poetry.
And you can tell by the strophes,
the repetition,
the parallelism,
all of these structures here are poetic structures.
So it was written to explain the question of why.
And so with that lens,
putting that lens on,
we're going to look at verses 1 through 25,
which are meant to help us understand the world we live in
and the God who made it.
And specifically,
it's going to show us three things about this world.
That God conceived it in love.
That God created it by His word.
And that God called it good.
He conceived it in love.
He created it by His word.
And He called it good.
Let's pray for God's help.
Our Father in heaven,
we do,
as we've,
in our song and in our prayer,
acknowledge that we need Your word to lead us
to lighten our path,
to illuminate our way,
to give us life that we cannot find here,
that we can only find in You.
That Lord,
we pray these things would happen in us
as we open Your word together.
And we ask this in Your Son's name.
Amen.
So the first thing we see
in the opening verses of Genesis 1
is this,
that God conceived this world in love.
It was conceived in love.
If you begin reading,
it says in verse 1,
in the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth.
So we have God.
There's God.
The earth was without form and void,
and darkness was over the face of the deep,
and the Spirit of God
was hovering over the face of the water.
So we have God,
and then we have the Spirit of God.
And the Spirit of God is hovering,
and this is a beautiful Hebrew word
that conveys the image of a mother bird
hovering over her young.
And so it's an incredibly wonderful,
beautiful image,
kind of a familial image of care
and parental love.
The Spirit of God is hovering
over the face of the waters.
Verse 3,
And God said,
Let there be light.
And there was light.
So we see,
unlike other creation myths
and stories and accounts,
God speaks creation into being.
So you have the Word of God,
and when you look at places like John chapter 1
or Colossians chapter 1,
we see that Jesus is this Word,
as Colossians says,
through whom all things were made.
So here in the opening verses,
we have at the very beginning of the Bible,
really before anything
has been brought into being,
we have a creator,
this God who is in his very nature,
tri-personal.
Three persons.
One God, but three persons.
You have a Father, the God,
and then you have the Spirit of God,
and then you have the Word of God,
the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit.
And you have this tri-personal being
that shows us that before anything existed,
everything that is,
everything that is in this world,
including us,
was conceived of or thought up
in the context of a loving interpersonal relationship.
That's astounding.
It's amazing.
It's amazing when you think that that means
that love itself,
so the kind of love that exists between persons,
was never created.
Unlike virtually everything else,
love has always been,
has always been,
an eternal relationship of love.
You know, it's radically different
from the other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts.
Right?
A common example that you may be familiar with
is the Babylonian creation story,
Enuma Elish.
And if you know anything about the plot of that story,
this is the creation account.
Guess what happens?
There's a lot of drama that ensues,
but the real climax of the story
is Marduk kills his great, great, great grandmother,
Tiamat,
who happens to be a dragon.
And then he fillets her like a fish.
And then he takes half of her corpse
and makes the sky out of it.
Okay?
Mom, Dad, why is the sky so beautiful at night?
Well, it's Tiamat's rotting corpse.
That's really what you're looking at.
So, you look at that account,
you look at these other accounts,
there's violence,
there's divine power struggles,
there's conquest,
there's sometimes rape and sexual assault,
there's all kinds of things,
you know, divine copulation,
and God's playing tricks on each other,
and betraying each other,
and killing their parents.
And then you look at this story.
An eternal interpersonal relationship
of perfect love.
And that's the context
from which all of this sprang into being.
So what's the implication of this for us?
The implication is this.
The primary thing,
the primary thing,
in life,
the primary principle,
is interpersonal relationships.
Relationships of love.
Most of us, if we're honest,
most of us,
if we look at our own lives,
we know that relationships matter in theory.
And most of us have a few people
that we're close to,
friends and family that we're close to,
but most of us,
even though we know relationships matter,
they really tend to take a backseat
to other things.
I mean, in a place like D.C.,
people don't come here for relationships.
You come here for a job,
you come here for an internship,
you come here for school,
you come here to get credentialed in some way,
you come here to get a foot in the door
to a career that will probably lead you elsewhere.
I know very few people
that come here for relationship.
I know more and more of you
are staying because of relationships.
Because we're beginning to see
and to realize
that when we live a kind of life
where relationships are the things
we fit in around the margins,
you know, I have my job,
that's central,
I have my career,
I have my education,
those are central,
they get the best of me,
and then whatever leftover time
and energy I have,
I'm kind of fitting relationships
in when and where I can, right?
Relationships tend to be
the things we fit in.
This is true for me.
This is autobiographical, right?
But here's the thing.
If love,
if interpersonal love
is the only thing here
that has always been
because it was in God,
in God's very nature,
and if that is the world in which
or the context in which
all of this was conceived of
and a loving interpersonal relationship,
then that is the primary thing.
We talked a couple of weeks ago
about because God created
the heavens and the earth,
we know that there's a purpose,
there's a design,
there's a way
that it's meant to function.
And guess what?
At the very center of that way
is relationship.
It's relationship.
We're designed,
the world is made
to revolve around relationship,
relationship that exists
between us
and then between us and God.
It's central.
So if we want to live in a way
that reflects the kind of flow,
the fabric,
the grain,
the texture
of ultimate reality,
if we want to be
radically countercultural,
what would it look like
to fit our job
and our school
and our credentialing
around relationships?
What would it look like
to make decisions
about where we live
and where we move
or whether we move
based primarily on
the place where we're going
to have the richest
relationships
with one another
and with God?
And that was
the central priority.
Not convenience.
Not pleasure.
Not necessarily success
or career advancement.
Not free parking.
Not easily accessible
grocery stores.
Not safer streets.
But what if we made it
about relationship?
If that was the primary thing?
So this is the first thing
we see about creation.
God conceives this world
in love
and that tells us
that loving relationships
are the most important thing
there is.
And then as we move on
in the text,
we see the next thing.
God conceived this world
in love.
He created it by His word.
Verse 2 says
that the world
was without form
and void.
The Hebrew there
is tohu wabohu
or tohu vabohu.
In short,
this conveys
the idea of chaos.
It's not nothing.
There's something
but that something
is chaos.
It's undifferentiated matter.
It's useless,
functionless,
purposeless stuff.
And then what does God do?
God speaks.
Let there be light.
And then what does
His word do to the chaos?
His word brings
order to the chaos.
What does His word
do to the darkness?
It brings light
to the darkness.
So order to chaos,
light to darkness.
He takes this chaos
and He begins
to do what with it?
He begins to differentiate.
Chaotic matter,
He separates
and differentiates
and begins to assign roles
and functions to things.
And so in day one,
we see God separating
and establishing
the rhythm of day and night.
This will be day
and this will be night.
And night is not day
and day is not night.
They're separate.
What's God doing?
A rhythm of day and night.
This is the creation of time.
Time.
You wonder why there's
evening and then morning?
It's kind of weird.
Why would there not be
morning and then evening
on the first day?
There's evening and then morning.
It's because when God,
before God did this,
there was no day.
There was no morning.
And God does this act of creation
and the first thing to come
in this rhythm is evening.
And then morning.
He's establishing time.
Day two.
God separates the waters above
from the waters below.
In the ancient Near East,
people believed that
there was a storehouse
of water above the sky.
And that's where rain came from.
And the object
is not to correct the science.
As we said,
it's to answer
the deeper question of why.
It's theology.
So God,
it says God separates
the waters above
from the waters below
with an expanse.
And what will that expanse do?
It will regulate the rain
and the wind.
It will regulate
the clear sky
and the clouds.
What is God doing?
He's creating weather.
Day one, time.
Day two, weather.
Climate.
Day three,
God separates land
from water
and then sets up
the processes
by which that land
will produce plants,
which then produce seeds,
which then produce
more plants.
What's he doing?
Agriculture.
Time.
Weather.
Agriculture.
And these are the pillars
of society.
And they're also
the three things
that to this day
with all of our great technology
we still can't control.
Days four, five, and six,
God populates
these various domains.
He populates
the day and the night
with the sun
and the moon
and the stars
to do what?
To help appoint
and measure
the seasons
and the years.
Time, right?
He fills the sky
with birds
and the sea
with fish
and the land
with animals
and then finally humans.
And what we see
with all this
is this,
is that God's word
is bringing order
to chaos
and that makes it possible
for life to flourish.
God's word
orders the chaos
and as a result
life can exist
and life can flourish.
So what is the implication
for us?
God's word
has power
and it can have
this same power
in our lives.
The same power.
If you notice
throughout Genesis chapter one
there's this poetic pattern
and normally
when there's a pattern
it means it's something
to be emphasized
and one of the patterns
in Genesis one
is this,
and God said
and it was so.
And God said
and it was so.
And God said
and it was so.
It recurs
every single day.
And if we go forward
into the New Testament
we see this isn't
the only place
that we see
this kind of language.
Where else do we see it?
When Jesus came
the first thing
that people noticed
about him
was what?
We heard it
in Luke chapter four.
The authority
of his word.
We've never heard
speaking like this.
He speaks with authority.
He says to the demon
come out
and the demon comes out.
He says to the storm
be still
and the storm stills.
He says to the man
come out of the tomb
and the man rises
and comes out
of his tomb.
He says take up
your mat and walk
and the man
takes up his mat
and walk.
It's the same authority.
It's the same word.
Here's the thing.
When we put our lives
under that word
in other words
when we put our lives
under the authority
when we allow that word
to speak to us
in that way
when we put our lives
under scripture
when we
submit ourselves
to this power
we are submitting ourselves
to the very same
creative power
that brought this world
into existence.
The same creative power.
Is Jesus the word
or is scripture the word?
Yes.
This is why
this is why
Jesus in John 14
says if anyone loves me
he will obey my
word.
Word.
They're one and the same.
What we're seeing here
is that just as God
created the world
he is recreating it
now
and he does that
through the word.
Jesus
and scripture.
The psalm we read earlier
Psalm 119
verse 25
it's just kind of been
floating around
in my brain
in my heart
for the last several weeks
it's just really
stuck with me lately
verse 25 says
my soul clings
to the dust
give me life
according to your word.
It's a confession
and then a petition
my soul clings
to the dust
that's the confession
that's the truth about me
my soul clings
to the dust.
What does that mean?
Here's the cruel joke
played on human beings
through the fall.
The things that I most desire
are the things
that will destroy
and bring chaos
and darkness
into my life.
the things
that will bring me life
are the things
that I least desire.
Right?
Nobody who is married
is naturally
monogamously faithful
to their spouse.
That doesn't come
we're not naturally
that's not our
our 100% of the time desire.
We don't desire that
all of the time.
Every marriage
everybody who is in marriage
at some point
if you're married long enough
will have to deal
with some form of desire
for somebody
who's not your spouse.
Why?
My soul clings
to the dust.
Dust in the Bible
that's chaos
that's decay
that's death.
My soul clings
to that.
Right?
Generosity
doesn't come naturally.
What comes naturally?
What's my instinct
with my stuff?
It's to hoard it
and protect it
so that I can have
more than you.
My soul clings
to the dust.
Forgiveness
doesn't come naturally.
Forgiveness brings life
and healing
and restoration
but it's hard
it doesn't come naturally.
What do I want to do?
I want to hold a grudge
for 20 years.
I don't want to get
revenge on you.
You hurt me
I want to get you back.
That's what comes naturally.
Why?
My soul clings
to the dust.
People say
well you know
some people
like obviously
pastors must love
to read the Bible.
I hate to read the Bible.
No.
Nobody likes to read the Bible.
You want to know why?
Nobody likes to read the Bible.
Naturally.
Why?
Your soul clings
to the dust.
Your soul clings
If everybody
loved waking up
and reading the Bible
and understanding
and applying it
you wouldn't need me.
We wouldn't need
any of this.
The only way
the soul must
understand something
that we need to understand.
My soul clings
to the dust.
The only way
out of that
the only way
to recapture
my heart
and recapture
my affections
and recalibrate
my desires
is through the word.
I've got to come
under the creative
recreative power
of that word.
I've got to
let that recreate me
from the inside out
so that I will desire
the things of life
and not the dust
and chaos
of death.
Genesis 1
shows us
the power
of God's word
to order the world.
Won't you let it
order your life?
Won't you let it
order your priorities?
Won't you let it
order your values?
Your commitments?
Genesis 1
shows us
that God's word
makes it possible
for life
to flourish.
Let it
bring flourishing
life to you.
How?
You have to put
yourself under
its creative authority.
So God
conceived this world
in love.
He created this world
by his word.
Two things
that we see.
And then the third
thing we see
is this
that God
looked at all of this
and he called it good.
He called it good.
And I love this.
It says a little bit
later,
God saw everything
that he had made
and behold,
it was very good.
You've got to realize
the implications of this.
You know,
Eastern religions
tend to think
that the material
world is an illusion.
Right?
The whole purpose
of transcendental
meditation,
Buddhist meditation
and discipline
is to transcend
the illusion
of the material.
Right?
Those of you
who practice yoga
and love yoga,
the whole context
of the development
of yoga
is to help you
transcend the illusion
of the material world
to escape.
The Greeks
and the Romans
tend to think
that the material world
is real
but it's evil.
It's evil
and there's an idealizing
of the spiritual
and the hope
is to reject,
to reject
the evil material world
and to escape
to the spiritual.
That sounds a lot like
the way a lot
of Christians talk
but that's not
what the Bible says
about the material world.
A lot of Christians
think that way.
You know that song
I'll Fly Away?
That's not Christianity.
It's a great song
but it doesn't reflect
the truth
of what God's word says
about this world.
Christianity is the only
religion there is
as far as I know
that says this world,
this material world
right here
is good.
It's good.
Right?
Though it's fallen,
though it's broken,
though it's twisted,
under all of that
it was fundamentally good.
Implications.
What does this mean?
Christians should throw
the best parties.
Christians should throw
the best parties.
I'm not even kidding.
The doctrine of creation
makes it possible
for us to have
an extraordinarily
balanced relationship
with the material world.
The balance is this.
We can thoroughly enjoy it
without worshipping it.
We can enjoy it
without worshipping it.
On the one hand,
we know that this world,
this creation story
tells us,
this world was meant
to be enjoyed.
It was meant to be
relished.
It was meant
to be celebrated.
I mean,
it's no coincidence
that Jesus loves
a good party.
He was accused
of being a glutton
and a drunkard
because he always went
to these parties.
And I don't think
he was sitting
in their corner
with his,
you know,
kind of,
oh,
you go ahead.
I don't think
he was doing that.
I think he was
enjoying good food
and good drink
and good conversation
over the table.
He was enjoying himself.
The Son of Man
came eating and drinking,
right?
It's no coincidence
that he put
at the very center
of our relationship
with him
the symbol,
the sacrament
of the meal
that we share.
He could have
picked anything,
but he picked a meal.
Bread and wine
shared between friends.
It's no coincidence
that the image
that he uses
to tell us
what the new creation
will be like
is a great feast
the likes of which
we've never seen,
the likes of which
we can't even imagine.
Rich food
and landscapes
and sunsets
and symphonies
and the smell of rain
on hot pavement
and fall breezes
and all of that
is meant to be enjoyed,
it's meant to be celebrated,
it's meant to be relished.
So Christians
should be great
celebrators of creation.
We should love beauty,
we should love art,
we should love music,
we should love good food
and good drink,
we should love
all of these things.
We should love them
and celebrate them
more than anyone else.
You know this concept,
the joie de vivre,
Christians should exude
a joy of life.
On the other hand,
while this world
was made to be enjoyed,
it was not made
to be worshipped.
Unlike many other religions,
God is separate
from his creation.
The sky,
the stars,
the sun and the moon,
they're not gods,
they're things
that God made.
The animals are not divine,
the trees are not divine,
the ocean is not
a divine being.
That's what Tiamat was,
the god of the ocean.
God is none of these things,
God made all of these things,
God is thoroughly,
utterly,
completely separate
and holy,
which is what holy means,
from his creation.
And what that tells us
is that while we should
enjoy creation,
we should never worship creation.
We should never
make it our God.
Romans 1 says
that's what's wrong with us.
Romans 1 says
it's because we started
worshipping the created things
rather than the creator
that has twisted our hearts.
So to be made right
with God through Jesus
is to have our hearts
made right,
to worship the creator
and not any created thing.
We're designed to love
and worship God
above all else.
That's what we need
to flourish.
So you see this balance,
this balance that we're called to.
We're neither ascetics,
living in a cave somewhere,
rejecting everything.
We're not called to be ascetics.
We're not called to be hedonists.
We should enjoy,
enjoy the world
with the,
more than the hedonists
because we have the inner
detachment of the ascetics.
You see?
It's precisely because
we don't need it,
because it isn't
the ultimate thing
because God is
and because we know
if we have God
we have everything.
It's precisely because
we don't need it
that we are liberated
to enjoy it
more than people
who do need it.
All of this language
about,
you know,
the Bible says
don't be worldly
and people say
well not being worldly
means all these things,
you know,
all the things
that I can and can't do
and all that.
No.
What worldliness is,
what the warning there is,
is not telling us
to avoid pleasure
in this life.
Worldliness is thinking
that the pleasure
in this life
is the only thing
there is.
That's what worldliness is.
It's forgetting
that this is just
a shadow
of what will be
in a consummated kingdom.
It's just a foretaste.
It's just the tiniest glimmer.
See,
pleasure and joy
and desire,
those are things
that are meant
to point us
to God
and forgetting
that there's anything
out there
and thinking
that this is it.
That's worldliness.
There's a great
illustration of this
in,
I just re-read
the Space Trilogy,
C.S. Lewis'
Space Trilogy,
and the second book
is called Perlandra
and it's about,
and I won't spoil
the plot for you
if you haven't read it,
but it's about Ransom.
His name is Ransom,
Dr. Ransom,
and he travels
to a world
that has not yet
gone through the fall.
So you see a world
as it would be
before the fall
and you see things
like desire
and pleasure
operating there
as they would
without sin,
without the fall.
And one of my favorite parts
is when Ransom
has finally climbed up
onto the shore
and he's hungry
and he finds a gourd
and he takes this gourd
and he's not sure
if he can eat it
and he's kind of
feeling around
and his finger
pokes through
and kind of makes
this opening
and he sits there
staring at it
wondering if he should
sample it.
He's on a completely
alien world.
He's understandably
cautious
and he's looking at it
and it says this,
after a moment's hesitation,
he put the little aperture
to his lips.
He had meant to extract
the smallest
experimental sip
but the first taste
put his caution
all to flight.
It was, of course,
a taste
just as his thirst
and hunger
had been thirst
and hunger
but then it was
so different
from every other taste
that it seemed
mere pedantry
to call it a taste
at all.
It was like the discovery
of a totally new
genus of pleasures,
something unheard of
among men
out of all reckoning,
beyond all covenant.
For one draft
of this on earth,
wars would be fought
and nations betrayed.
And then it says,
as he let the empty
gourd fall from his hand
and was about to pluck
a second one,
it came into his head
that he was now
neither hungry
nor thirsty.
Perfectly satisfied.
And yet,
to repeat
a pleasure
so intense
and almost
so spiritual
seemed an obvious
thing to do.
His reason,
or what we commonly
take to be reason
on our own world,
was all in favor
of tasting this miracle
again.
But for whatever cause,
it appeared to him
better not to taste again.
Perhaps the experience
had been so complete
that repetition
would be a vulgarity,
like asking to hear
the same symphony
twice in a day.
And then here's the,
it concludes with this.
It says,
after this experience,
he wondered how often
in his life on earth
he had reiterated pleasures
not through desire
but in the teeth of desire.
In the teeth of desire.
See,
this is what's possible
when our relationship
with God
is righted.
And we love God,
we come through
his power
to love him
more than anything
he's made,
even a nearly
spiritual experience
of drinking
from a gourd.
We can experience
pleasure,
we can experience
desire
to their fullest
of what they were
meant to be
without being caught
in the teeth of desire.
See,
that's the paradox.
You have to be free
from it
to be able
to fully enjoy it.
But the more
you come to need it,
the less you can enjoy it
because you're
enslaved by it.
So when our hearts
are put right
and when we realize
that we're made
to love the creator
and not the created thing,
we can enjoy
all created things.
We can enjoy
all of them.
And we can enjoy
them through our desire
which was made
for these things
because
we're not caught
in the teeth of them.
We're not caught
in the teeth
of our own desire
because we recognize
that as Augustine said,
ultimately
our hearts
will be restless
until they find
their rest,
their peace,
their fulfillment
in the creator God.
Right?
So as we look
at these verses,
we see three amazing
things about this world.
Amazing things
about this world
that God conceived
this world in love,
that love was always there,
that before anything
was made,
these three persons
were in their love,
in their other glorifying,
self-sacrificing,
other oriented love
that they shared
with one another.
They dreamed up together.
They dreamed up
the idea of you
and me
and all of this.
God conceived
the world in love.
He created it
by His word,
His powerful word,
and then He called it good.
And as we'll see
in the coming weeks,
as we said,
the world is fallen
as we are fallen
and things are not
the way they're supposed to be.
But the good news
is this.
Here's the good news.
That the same love
that moved God
to create all of this,
that same love
has moved God
to rescue it
and to restore it.
That the same word
that created all of this
and brought it into being,
that same word
has now become flesh,
has come among us,
and has given of life
to rescue us.
And that because
of these things,
because of this love,
and because of the word
become flesh,
we know that just as God
once looked at all of this
and said,
this is very good,
pronounced His pleasure
in what He had made
in His workmanship.
So through Jesus Christ,
God looks at each one of us
and beholds His workmanship
and says,
this is very good.
This is very good.
Let's pray.
Our Father,
we do thank You
for Your Word
and thank You
for showing us
these deep realities
of ourselves
and the world
that we live in
and what they show us
about You.
We thank You
for the eternity
and the beauty
and the primacy
of love.
We pray that You
would bless
our relationships.
In particular,
we pray for those
without relationships,
who lack friends,
who are lonely
or don't have family.
We pray for all of those
that through Your power
and through this community
they would find a family,
they would find friends.
We pray that You,
as You say in Your Psalms,
that You are the God
who sets the lonely
in families.
We pray that that would happen
through this community.
Lord, we pray that Your Word
would have power
in this place,
that it would be
recreating us,
as we submit to it.
And Lord,
we pray finally
that we would have
such an awareness
of the goodness
of what You've made,
that we would be
a celebratory people.
Lord,
that there would be
a joy and a richness
to our life together.
And we pray that this
would not distract us
from You,
but that it would be
one of the ways
that we worship You.
And we pray this
in Your Son's holy name.
Amen.